No car, no job

Many different solutions have been proposed for the current sky high motor insurance premiums crisis. But one brave MP has just pointed out the one we’ve all been missing. Nigel Evans, Under-Speaker of the Common House, has called on insurers to use “more imagination.” It’s genius, really, isn’t it!

The outlandish sums now demanded of young drivers for insuring their cars are forcing rural youngsters in particular to abandon their dreams of perhaps getting a job or something and maybe moving out of their parents’ homes at some point. “Young people are having to turn down work,” Mr Evans has apparently claimed, because they can’t afford to run the car they need to leave the house.

The vast majority of young drivers, Evans claims, “are not involved in accidents nor do they drive dangerously” and so should not be “hammered” or “punished before they have even sat behind the wheel.” Evans says he’s planning to meet with the ABI to suggest things like giving young drivers some money back if they fail to crash within their first twelve months or offering them a lower premium if their test examiner submits a positive assessment.

Premiums for young drivers really are “a bit steep,” as Evans puts it in the This Is Money article from which we’ve looted all the factual content here; but why cite real quotes of £4k+ when you can enliven the debate with computer generated aberrations (and/or please go away requests) like the £24,000 that AA quoted Pass-Plus-graduate Daniel Grey, 18, for insuring his 11-year-old Volvo S40?

The AA’s other contribution to the This is Money feature is the statistical finding that young drivers’ premiums have jumped by “up to 90 per cent in just two years” which is perhaps not that surprising in the light of the above.